Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper didn’t have to wait long Tuesday night to learn he will be Colorado’s next governor.

The Denver Post and other media outlets projected that Hickenooper had won out over third-party candidate Tom Tancredo and the largely abandoned Republican Dan Maes a little more than an hour after the polls closed.

With 10 percent of the vote counted, Hickenlooper was leading with 53.2 percent, or 434,162 votes. He was outpolling Tancredo, of the American Constitution Party (36.3 percent, 296,593) and Maes (9.2 percent, 75,185) combined.

Hickenlooper called it a bittersweet victory, coming just three days after the death of his cousin, filmmaker George Hickenlooper. He said he believes he won so comfortably because his team ran a positive campaign.